Eduardo Frei Montalva

Eduardo Frei Montalva (16 January 1911-22 January 1982) was President of Chile from 3 November 1964 to 3 November 1970, succeeding Jorge Alessandri and preceding Salvador Allende. He was a member of the Christian Democratic Party of Chile and the father of future president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

Biography
Eduardo Frei Montalva was born in Santiago, Chile in 1911 to a wealthy Catholic family, and he graduated in law from Chile Catholic University in 1932, where he subsequently became professor of labor law. He became a leader of the anti-fascist Catholic movement, the National Falange, which in 1957 became the Christian Democratic Party of Chile. As its leader, he won the 1964 presidential elections with the overambitious slogan "revolution in liberty". The programs he initiated included extension of education and social welfare, agrarian reform, and the Chileanization of the copper industry, whose controlling interests had until then been held by US companies. However, his reforms were too much for the conservatives and too little for the left. The failure to check inflation and labor unrest, and to bring about an effective redistribution of wealth, led to the election of Salvador Allende, and Frei retired. His party supported Augusto Pinochet's military coup against Allende in 1973 (while Frei was serving as President of the Senate), as he believed that Allende had violated the constitution, but he later became a vocal opponent of the Pinochet regime. The Pinochet regime's DINA secret police responded by poisoning him with botulinum toxin during routine surgery, and the weakened Frei died of septicemia on 22 January 1982. His assassination was uncovered in 2009, and six people were arrested for his murder. His son Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle would become President in 1994.